With the graduation of All-American Angelo Chol, some expected a decline this season in Hoover High basketball.

Hardly.

Chol, a national record-holder in blocked shots who accepted a scholarship to Arizona, left a sizable hole in the lineup, but the Cardinals have moved on. Hoover enters the regular-season finale at home tonight at 7:30 against Patrick Henry with a 25-4 overall record. The Cardinals, who have a chance to win their fifth straight Eastern League title, are tied atop the standings with Morse at 8-1.

“We have always been bigger than one player,” Hoover coach Ollie Goulston said.

Having Chol — the “Human Flyswatter” — to defend the basket permitted the Cardinals to gamble on defense last season. Ironically, with Chol’s departure, Hoover is playing tighter overall defense.

Seven seniors — six of them are four-year Hoover players with one having moved in at the beginning of his sophomore year — make the Cardinals’ post-Chol performance that much more impressive.

“We can’t replace Angelo’s impact around the rim,” said senior Chris Jones, Hoover’s leading scorer with a 17.8 average. “But by the same token we are a more balanced offense that plays better defense as a group.”

The Cardinals are averaging more than 70 points a game.

Hoover is the latest among several local teams in the past decade to experience the departure of a national talent.

La Costa Canyon coach Dave Cassaw dealt with the loss of McDonald’s All-American Chase Budinger, who attended Arizona and now plays for the NBA’s Houston Rockets.

“Guys like Budinger only come around once in a while,” Cassaw said. “You celebrate when you have them and regroup when you lose them.”

Marlon Wells, now the coach at Bishop’s, addressed a major void when Charde Houston graduated from San Diego High. Houston set the state career scoring record of 3,837 points before moving on to UConn and then turning pro, playing for the 2011 WNBA-champion Minnesota Lynx.

“You don’t replace a player like Charde,” Wells said. “What she did do is leave an impact on the program that the kids who followed her wanted to continue. We adapted our game to the kids that we had.”

Hoover has done the same thing.

“Yes, we miss Angelo,” Cardinals senior Jonathan Booker said. “He did things inside the paint that we are unable to do this year. But we have adjusted, and I think, become a better team, the best we’ve had in my four years here.”

In his ninth season at Hoover, Goulston has directed the Cardinals to six San Diego Section Division II championship games, winning in 2006, 2008 and 2009.

Hoover enters the playoffs ranked third in the section behind La Costa Canyon and Lincoln, but the road will not be easy if the Cardinals hope to break the school record of 28 wins in a season. Five of the section’s Top 10 teams compete in Division II.

Hoover, one of the region’s oldest schools famous for producing Hall of Fame slugger Ted Williams, had been to only three San Diego Section championship games before Goulston’s arrival.

Jones respects the hallowed hall that is Hoover High’s gym.

“Playing at Hoover is a special feeling not like any other gym,” he said. “It is a special facility with all those photos and jerseys on the walls. I’m talking about Ted Williams, Todd Doxey and Jaydee Luster. I am in awe every time I dribble out there — whether it is for a game or even practice.”

After basketball standouts Luster and Doxey graduated in 2007, Hoover won titles the following two years.

Under Goulston’s tutelage, the Cardinals always seem to find a tunnel to the limelight.

“Tradition is huge in basketball at this school,” Booker said. “So we take a lot of pride in the tradition to keep it going.”